Mitchum said:
So, after FT1 is in, we may as well revolt to Bureaucracy, right?
We'd get less cultural output out of Oracle City... would Free Religion make up for that fact? Maybe.
We'd also get less cultural output out of Paris, but we'd get the Bureaucracy bonus, probably giving us more cultural output overall.
A Defensive Pact (with Shaka) takes 11 turns for us to see +1 Diplo from it, so we're far too late for signing those.
A Great Person can get from Theft Park to Paris and still have movement points within the span of 1 turn. The same can be said for a Great Person in Paris moving to Oracle City.
A Great Person born in Alexandria would take 3 turns to be able to Culture Bomb:
T0 is born and moves to a City with an Airport
T1 Airlifts
T2 has movement points available to it
Alexandria needs 11 GPP to get the next Great Person. It has The Spiral Minaret in it, which gives us 4 GPP per turn under Pacifism.
Under Pacifism, Theft Park could beat Alexandria, since they'd both pass the 2600 GPP mark on the same turn as each other and Theft Park is a longer-owned City of ours, so the tie-breaker would go to Theft Park.
The next closest Cities to getting Great People are:
Double Fish
Pig GP
but those Cities already have pretty much max Specialists hired, so they won't be able to generate Great People for us, even with some form of starvation (Double Fish would be the closest, with a Great Person being 5 turns away, but it would not be a Great Artist).
So, forget about other Cities generating a Great Person.
I guess the decision comes down to... if we switch out of Pacifism, can we still get the next Great Person out of Theft Park within a reasonable time frame?
- Theft Park has 1972 GPP
- Theft Park makes a base 80 GPP per turn (this number cannot be altered, since, as Mitchum says, we've hired max Specialists there)
- Theft Park has the National Epic
- Theft Park thus either makes 160 GPP without Pacifism or 240 GPP with Pacifism
- I confirmed in a test game that GPP targets are 2600, 2800, 3000, and 3300. So, the number that we need to examine is 2800
- It is T268 and we'd need one born on T274 or earlier. We'd get GPP from these turns:
T269
T270
T271
T272
T273
T274
We'd have to remember to switch back into Pacifism on the turn where we'd need Qin's vote, which I'm thinking is T272, but Mitchum has it listed as being T271, which is playing it safely and is fine as far as I am concerned.
Let's do a "worst case" GPP calculation of us switching into Free Religion on the current turn and back into Pacifism on T271
T268 1972 GPP Switch to Free Religion
T269 + 160 = 2132
T270 + 160 = 2292
T271 + 160 = 2452 Switch to Pacifism
T272 + 240 = 2692
T273 + 240 = 2932 We'd have to somehow figure out which Great Person was born even though we'd first be prompted how to vote in the UN Election. Maybe with the game's autolog turned on properly, you can see which Great Person got generated, if the Event Log entry isn't yet visible at the top middle of the screen. That way, we'd know which resolution to propose based on which Great Person we had ALREADY EARNED but the game interface may not make it easy for us to figure out which type of Great Person it was
With the current plan, we'd have:
T268 1972 GPP
T269 + 240 = 2212
T270 + 240 = 2452 Switch to Free Religion
T271 + 160 = 2612 Switch to Pacifism
T272 + 240 = 2852 We would know on time without any trickiness from the interface what type of Great Person we received
Qin is +5 for Shared Religion and +6 for Shared Favourite Civic toward Hammurabi, for a total of +16 Friendly. Take away those +11 and we won't need to be in Bureaucracy ourselves, but... going into Free Speech without Bureaucracy could cause Qin to get Pleased toward us, which technically opens up the door for him to declare war on us.
So, perhaps what we should do, before switching out of Pacifism, is sign a Defensive Pact with Qin only. That way, if Saladin attacks Hammurabi, we won't need to get involved in that war. Also, if Saladin attacks us, we'll get Qin's aid and Mutual Military Struggle bonus. Also, Qin won't attack someone with whom he's signed a Defensive Pact, even if our relationship drops down to Pleased.
In fact, we could sign the Defensive Pact with Qin immediately with no real consequences that I can think of (in the worst case, Saladin was plotting a war against Qin, which makes no sense at all, but even then, we'd get Mutual Military Struggle points with Qin). So, I'd say that we sign the Defensive Pact with Qin, but ONLY with Qin.
Actually, there is one potential major consequence, and that is angering Saladin enough to cancel giving us his Sid's Sushi Resources.
So, we also need to get a SPY INTO ONE OF SALADIN'S CITIES, such as Damascus. There's one tantalizingly sitting there in Coal Theft... just sitting... waiting... begging to be sent on a Spy Mission, but we keep "grounding" Agent 69, the poor girl. That way, we'll have more flexibility with Saladin (switching him to Free Religion, too, for example) if he cancels his Rice + Crab deals with us.
To add to the plan: So, we should aim to switch Saladin's Civic to Free Religion on T271 before we switch back to Pacifism ourselves.
At some point, Qin + Hammurabi renegotiated their Horse trade and now Hammurabi is trading away his Iron.
However, we CAN still get:
Gold from Qin <-> Dye
Coal + 1 GPT from Hammurabi <-> Gem
Doing so would cost us a little bit more in terms of Corporate Maintenance, so we'd be operating at a minor deficit.
Etowah can build Wealth for 1 GPT since our Trade Route Commerce is going toward Culture.
So, there is that minor point in time where we'd be in Free Religion that marginally concerns me in regards to Qin potentially being able to declare war on us, but I think that with an immediately-signed Defensive Pact, we should be okay.
There is a minor concern that Saladin could cancel the Sid's Sushi Resources with us at any time, but we could then just immediately switch into Free Religion, USE THE SPY THAT WE ARE GOING TO SEND TO HIS CITY OF DAMASCUS to have one chance to switch him into Free Religion, too. If he doesn't cancel the Resources with us before the planned revolt to Free Religion on T270, then we can just switch into Free Religion on T270 and make sure that the BUFFY Logging option is enabled of whoever plays the turnset (and confirm in a test game first that you can read the contents of said autolog):
1. Ctl + Alt + o to open BUFFY options
2. Checkmark Enable Logging
3. Checkmark Start Automatically
4. Checkmark Events -> Great People
5. Ensure that a value exists in the File field
6. Having a blank Path value has not seemed to have created a file for me named what is listed in the File field, so I just put in a Path value of C:\temp and that worked for a test game, but the autolog file was named "TEST GAME F AP.txt" after the name of my Leader, so maybe a blank Path value does work and gives us a Louis XIV Real.txt file somewhere on our computer... ahhh, yes, there it is... in:
{Your Civ4 installation directory}\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003\Autolog
So, the Path value should be optional if you don't mind navigating to that particularly-long path on your computer.
I just confirmed in my test game where I get a Great Peron every turn (Paris got EVERY Building and Wonder in the game, haha) that since we receive our Great Person at the end of the previous turn, the autolog saved on your computer (ASSUMING that you follow the above steps to set it up properly!!!) will tell you the type of Great Person that we received at the end of the previous turn while the "choose a UN Diplo resolution" screen is still actively blocking you from doing anything within Civ 4. I.e. In my test game, it is T160 and it is asking me to propose a resolution, but the Autolog says "Turn 159/500" then some stuff and then says "After End Turn:" and tells me that Rene Descarted (Great Scientist) was born in Paris.
So, we'll have some leeway on when we switch to Free Religion in order to revolt Saladin into Free Religion, as well, as long as Agent 69 doesn't stay permanently grounded in Coal Theft.
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